Even the report’s authors say the idea may sound barmy.

But the Policy Exchange, a right-wing thinktank, says it was serious when it called on the government to stop spending money trying to regenerate struggling northern cities and use the cash instead to help their residents relocate to the southeast.

Its report says it is unrealistic to expect cities like Liverpool, Hull and Sunderland to ever regenerate properly. 

They are too isolated and the source of their original wealth — ship-building, ports and other heavy industry– have disappeared.

It would be better to help people to move to places like London, Oxford and Cambridge, the report says.

“Places that enjoyed the conditions for creating wealth in the coal-powered 19th-century often do not do so today,” the report says. “There is no realistic prospect that our
regeneration towns and cities can converge with London and the South East.

“There is, however, a very real prospect of encouraging significant numbers of people to move from those towns to London and the South East.”

Critics say the idea makes no economic, political or social sense.

The southeast is full. Its roads, public transport and services are overcrowded. House prices are sky-high and not enough new homes are being built. The area’s infrastructure, including water supplies, couldn’t cope, they say.

And anyway, why should people uproot their families and move to an alien part of the country?

What do you think? Is it time to admit that some northern towns and cities should be left to fall into decline, while the southeast should get more investment?